Language Variation and Language Change is concerned with synchronic and diachronic variation in a great variety of Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages. From their different language backgrounds, members of this group address their research questions using the "bottom-up approach", i.e. starting with the collection and analysis of a solid body of data and examining its implications for theoretical claims. They thus contribute both to a better understanding of the language families they specialize in and to a number of current theoretical issues, which are specified below.
German Dialect Syntax
The group would like to attract a PhD candidate whose project will concentrate on regional syntax in German. Since both dialectology and variation linguistics have to date mainly been concentrated on phonological aspects, research in the field of dialect and regiolect syntax can be seen as pioneering work in German linguistics.Topics of special attention are, e.g.:
- from a synchronic point of view: Study and analysis of syntactic variation in nonstandard varieties of German, be they dialects, regiolects (which mean regional varieties with a larger areal distribution) or regional standards.
- from a diachronic point of view: Study and analysis of syntactic changes in regional varieties of German, especially in the framework of grammaticalization.
- from a crosslinguistic point of view: Study and analysis of crosslinguistic variation. Projects relating to different regional varieties of German are as welcome as work on different Germanic languages.
Independent of the concrete perspective chosen, projects combining a solid empirical basis and theoretical impact will be preferred.
As the PhD project will be closely integrated into the "Language Variation and Language Change" research group, candidates are expected to pursue their research in close collaboration with the ongoing research activities.
If you wish further information about this topic, please contact Alexandra Lenz (lenza at staff dot uni-marburg dot de).